Science at St. Anne’s
Intent
Science is everywhere! At St. Anne’s Primary School, we want our children to be naturally curious about the world around them. Our curriculum has been developed by staff to ensure full coverage of the National Curriculum and to foster this sense of wonder. We are committed to providing a stimulating, engaging and challenging learning environment. Throughout our school, children are encouraged to develop and use a range of working scientifically skills including questioning, researching and observing for ourselves, comparing, pattern seeking, fair testing, and identifying and clarifying.
We also want our children to be the scientists, for them to lead the discussions and in some cases, the experiments. Team work also has a vital role within science lessons and we foster collaboration through groups and learning partners. We intend to provide all children regardless of ethnic origin, gender, class, aptitude or disability with a broad and balanced science curriculum.
“I love making watching things happen in Science, it’s like magic.”
Implementation
We have implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the school. Teachers use assessment for learning to tailor lessons around our children and help us plan for next steps. In our school we strongly encourage all pupils to use specific topic related, scientific vocabulary and this is outlined in each lesson. Through effective teaching of science, we develop children’s knowledge and key skills during each topic. Children are provided with regular opportunities to develop strategies for questioning and thinking, with practical experiments acting as inspiration and motivation for this. At the start of each topic, teachers take time to find out what our children already understand and want to find out. Our teachers use this to adapt and extend the curriculum to match children’s interests and needs as well as current events, the use of any support staff and the resources available for practical investigations. Teachers are also encouraged to plan in trips and visitors to enhance our children’s learning experience and increase their exposure to science. We call this ‘Science capital.’
At St. Anne’s we have created 4 Science skills that we believe are of upmost importance that the children practise: practical investigations and experiments; children as the scientists; working together as a team and challenging ourselves to discover more. These skills are ones which at St Anne’s, we feel proud to say we nurture and show case across the wider curriculum. Science lessons allow to put these into practise using new and exciting school resources to discover the wonders of our world.
Impact
Our children feel they are independent scientists which inspires and motivates them to want to learn more. They are confident enquirers and support each other with their learning through teamwork. They are able to perform practical investigations with formal write ups, including predictions, a method, fair testing and a conclusion. Our children know exactly how to use the outside world to widen their scientific knowledge.
Long Term Science Overview
